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🔴 Problems with Gaming

  • Lack of True Ownership – Game assets are controlled by companies.
  • Shut Down Risk – Servers go offline, and players lose progress.
  • Closed Ecosystems – No interoperability between game economies.

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⛓️ Current Blockchain Limitations

  • Slow Gameplay – High latency prevents real-time interactions.
  • High Gas Costs – Transactions are expensive for frequent in-game actions.
  • Limited Developer Tooling – Complex blockchain development.

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⚡ MagicBlock’s Solution

  • True Digital Ownership – Players own and trade assets without restrictions.
  • Real-Time Gameplay – Instant, gas-efficient transactions for smooth experiences.
  • Composable Worlds – Game logic and economies can be extended by anyone.

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Example: MagicBlock Labs - Generals

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Abstract

In order to get a full birds eye view of all moving pieces involved with using MagicBlock, we provide a real-life example of a fully-fledged game accelerated by the MagicBlock Engine.

Source Code: MagicBlock Labs - Generals

Learn more about building and integrating games with MagicBlock!

Bolt

Simplify on-chain game development with BOLT

More Tools

Steamline your workflow with BOLT, Solana Unity SDK, SOAR, Session Keys …

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Architechture

There are a few main components involved when building with MagicBlock:
  • Solana, this will be mainnet-beta or devnet solana public chain’s RPC
    • This is where the smart contracts will be deployed and fetched from
    • This is where the final and partial state of your game will be settled on
  • Ephemeral Rollups, this is the MagicBlock validator RPC
    • This is where the transactions for your game will be run on
    • This is already deployed by MagicBlock and node operators (you can just use it as-is)
  • The Backend, this is the source code for the smart contract of the game
    • In this example the smart contracts are written using the BOLT framework
    • Those smart contracts will then be deployed on the regular solana’s chain
    • Source code is available: HERE
  • The Frontend, this is the User Interface of the game
    • The UI will be fetching state from both the chain and the ephemeral
    • The UI will be sending transaction to both the chain and the ephemeral
    • Source code is available: HERE

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Important processes

Browsing through the codebase will help understanding the high-level logic for setting up the ephemeral games.

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When the user creates a new game

When the user opens the “Create” page, we run create a new game: HERE
  1. We first create a new account on chain, like a regular solana smart contract
  2. We then delegate this new account to our ephemeral validator
  3. We can then send all our game transactions directly to the ephemeral’s RPC after that
    1. We generate the map (using a transaction sent to the ephemeral’s RPC)
    2. Wait for the players to join
    3. Start the game when all player joined

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When a player joins the game

When the user opens the main page, we fetch the list of existing games from the chain: HERE
  1. When the user joined the game’s page, we start listening to the game’s state inside the ephemeral: HERE
  2. We update the UI to display the map every time the game changes inside of the ephemeral, you can find the code for the page logic: HERE
  3. When the user executes a move on the map, we send the command transaction through directly in the ephemeral: HERE
  4. This will update the state of the game inside of the ephemeral, notifying all players and updating the UI immediately

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Recap

Making a game using MagicBlock is very similar to making a game on Solana. The only difference is the delegation process:
  • Once you setup the accounts on Solana, you can delegate the accounts so that they can be used inside of MagicBlock Engine
  • Once the accounts are delegated, you can send all transactions involving those accounts to the Ephemeral Rollups
  • Those transactions running inside of the Ephemeral session run in real time and can be free
  • Once you’re done with the game’s session, you can undelegate the accounts you need to use on Solana again